Home Sweet Home

In the daytime, as they rolled
through the sweltering prairie heat, they ran out of water. The toilets
wouldn't flush. At night, they curled up against green-plush,
straight-backed seats, fitfully brushing at insects and soot that kept
pouring in the windows.

Soon they learned to take the backs off the seats, improvise hot and
prickly beds from two seats with the chairbacks in between. Another man
would sleep on the other chairbacksin the aisle. Some dozed on their
luggage.

For six days and five nights they traveled in this fashion from Boston
to California500 veterans of the European war, now on...